During the January-April period, the country's car production reached 565,400 units, an increase of 110 percent compared with the same period last year, the bureau reported.

In April, car production rose a year-on-year 83.6 percent to 166,900 units.

The bureau earlier said auto output in March rose to a record 156,700 units, 42,500 up on February, and 30,000 higher than the figure for January.

The rapidly production growth was mainly fuelled by booming sales stimulated by SARS, said Jiang Yuan, an official with the bureau.

"People are no longer waiting for the good news of price cuts in the car market before buying, because they fear they might be affected with SARS when using public transport,'' said Jiang.

Jia Xinguang, chief analyst of the China National Automotive Industry Consulting and Development Corp, agreed the SARS crisis had forced some customers to bring forward the purchase of their cars.

"But SARS will not have much impact on the already-booming car market,'' he said.

The increasing number of more affluent people will undoubtedly want to buy their own cars, he said.

Experience from developed countries suggests that demand for cars speeds up when a country's per capita gross domestic product reaches US$1,000. China's per capita GDP reached that level last year.

The price war in past years has also helped bring car prices to a more reasonable level, said Jia.

Total sales of domestically-built automobiles are expected to exceed 4 million units this year, up from the 3.25 million sales last year, he added.

Sales of passenger cars manufactured in China will surge to more than 2 million units this year from 1.12 million units last year, he predicted.

Jia's forecast is up on that of the 4 million units of total vehicle sales this year, including 1.6 million passenger cars, made by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) earlier.

Total vehicle sales during the first four months of this year increased by 38.45 percent year-on-year to nearly 1.36 million units, according to statistics from CAAM.

Aimed at further encouraging car sales, China needs to map out a new automobile consumption policy, said Niu Li, a senior economist with the State Information Center.

"Although the prices for automobiles have dropped, the fees and taxes for consumers are too much,'' he said.

Jia Xinguang said the fees and taxes on cars in some Chinese provinces accounted for about 50 percent of the car prices.

"This was higher than the 15 percent value-added tax imposed in Germany, a 10 percent consumption tax and purchasing tax in Japan and a 6 percent sales tax in the United States,'' he said.

(China Daily May 21, 2003)